Lima said the Valongo represented a crucial part of the city's history that had been erased as Brazil sought to cover up the "brutal period of enslavement". It is believed that some 3 million African slaves were shipped to Brazil between 1550 and 1888, when slavery was officially abolished.

Archaeologists generally agree that one group of hunters migrated from northern Asia across the land bridge that connected Asia and North America through the region known as Beringia, slaughtering large mammals with spears and arrows fitted with characteristic stone tips known as Clovis points.

But a slowly growing body of evidence hints that a separate group of people, who originated perhaps in Japan, sailed along the coasts of both continents, traveling as far south as Tierra del Fuego and migrating as far inland as the glacial lakes of the Pacific Northwest.

As for today's Italians, they appear not to take much pride in their "Italianness" in spite of having shared the same state for 150 years, Gilmour observes. A successful national football team stirs common emotions but, by the turn of the millennium, "the sense of national identity, such as it had been, seemed to have disappeared, and increasing numbers of Italians were now questioning the legitimacy of the state".